BY HARRY WEEKES
At some point during last summer, a mountain lion had kits. These kittens then grew up to be medium-sized cats. I am not sure if the birth and growth happened in Indian Creek, or if they simply moved there along the way. My first encounter with the kits was coming across them shortly after sunrise, bounding out of the sage in front of me and disappearing into the willows. At first, I thought they were dogs. Then, I saw the size and length of their tails, and they disappeared. About a week later, one of the kittens (I assume it was one of the same) was just walking down the middle of Indian Creek Road. When I turned to see where it was headed, my headlights flashed across mama (I also assume), who slinked off of a side road and into the bushes.
All of this is context, as this piece is not about mountain lions, necessarily.
When I walk, it is dark. I do not carry a flashlight. Generally, I just shuffle along, lost in various thoughts or admiring the sky. Only once have I gotten “the vibe”— that strange feeling that I should not be walking. Enter above cats, who gamboled into my physical space and thereby entered my mind space in a very tangible way. Now, I knew there were mountain lions on my walk.
So I armed myself. With a walking stick. Actually, it is more of a walking staff made for hikers and flyfishers. To be sure I was appropriately menacing, I started carrying AND twirling it. That’s right, I figured a little spinning would be all that was necessary to deter a wild cat.
And so it was that I was walking along one early morning during the full moon, the world lit up in that wonderful and magical way a full moon does on partially snow-covered ground. There were, perhaps, a thousand shadows and pockets of dark on every side of the road as I came to the point farthest from my house. This is the place where the road narrows and moves along the edge of an old corral. It was here that the brush erupted.
OK, ‘erupted’ might be too strong of a word. The brush came to life with an immediate and explosive rattling that simultaneously brought my twirling to a halt and, somehow, let me know that the noise was neither coming towards me, nor threatening at all. It was an animal running away. And not a darty kind of rabbit running, but some low-to-the-ground galloping. This was a creature running through thick stems and heavy dried grass. I quickened my step to follow the animal just as the badger shot out of the sage in front of me and onto the road.
Someone once described a badger moving like a carpet being dragged by ants. In this case, it was more of a scrambling shadow yanked from one side of the road that zigzagged across the path before quickly ducking off and heading up the near hill. When I got to where it left the road, the sounds suddenly stopped, and somewhere out in the bushes I had a feeling that the badger was in a nice, protected space listening for what I was doing.
I waited for a couple of breaths, then started back toward my house. “Galloping,” I thought. “That badger was galloping.” I smiled broadly, then started slowly twirling the walking stick.
Harry Weekes is the founder and head of school at The Sage School in Hailey. This is his 50th year in the Wood River Valley, where he lives with Hilary and one of their three baby adults—Simon. The other members of the flock, Georgia and Penelope, are currently fledging at Davidson College in North Carolina and Middlebury College in Vermont, respectively.